'Whatever my Employment has been for some months past, I am now returned to those Studies wherin I have had your kind Supports which I shall ever thankfully acknowledge. That the piece of James the fifth, which your last mentions, seems to be rather a Medall than an ordinary Coin. I can hardly think that ther ever was any Gold struck in either Kingdome (for Common Currency) near the bulk of this before the Reigne of K Charles the 2d, who (you know) was the first that ordered the Coining of Pieces of 5 Guineas value. The Largest double Soveraigns yett that I ever saw of former Reigns, do not come nigh the weight of these. ... I keep my Golden Trajan for you, and resolve to bring it with me. Have you any Coins which you think belong’d to the Pictish Kings. H Boech mentions their payment of considerable Summs upon Ransome etc., but I do not know of any assurance given us that these payments were made in the proper Coyn of their Country.
I have sometimes wondered that we meet with no Danish Coins of any great age, either in England or in Scotland. We have mony coin’d by some of our Saxon Kings, before the Danes made there first Descent on this Island. And why then should not they not either bring in some of theirs or (at least) coin some for them selves here, after they were acquainted with the Saxon modes of Traffick. I never saw any piece of mony that I could assuredly say was inscribed with Runic Characters, excepting one in the possession of Mr Thoresby of Leeds, and this I take to be rather ane Amulet than a Coin properly so called. My thoughts on that smal piece of silver were communicated in a letter to the Owner, the Summ wherof is printed in the last edition of Cambden. You may probably (or else no body ever will) inform me, whatt is to be said farther on this Subject, and of what age the oldest piece of coined money, that has ever yett been found in Great Britain, may be presum’d to carry. I ame much prejudic’d (I confess) against the accounts we have had of those that are suppos’d to bear the name of K Cunobeline, and others of the British Princes, and am strongly inclin’d to them all Counterfits or Roman Amulets. One of thes now in my Ld Archb of Yorks possession , which was believed to have Cuno does most probably have the Goddess Juno (name and thing) and was consecrated at Rome to other purposes, than common mony (of the like Kinde with the ναoὶ ἀργυροι Ἀρτεμιδος Act: 19.24).'
(NLS, MS 33.3.19, f.63r; Burnett 2020b, pp. 1543-4)
